Missouri Tigers' impressive early tale

Marcus Denmon has been key, but teammate has been better

Ron Chenoy/US PresswireMarcus Denmon has helped the Tigers roar early in the 2011-12 season.

Greetings from what has been an altogether too brief sojourn through college basketball. As you may have heard, there appears to be labor peace in the NBA, which means I'll be returning to dissecting free agents, trades and whatnot.

But I'll make at least one final trek through the college hoops landscape. Since I'm trying to focus on the overlooked and undervalued, let's begin in Columbia, Mo. While everybody else was watching Duke win the Maui Invitational, Missouri was quietly beating the snot out of two very good teams to take the CBE Classic, thumping Notre Dame by 29 in the semifinals and crushing a ranked Cal team by 39 in the final.

The Tigers are 6-0 after Sunday's win over Binghamton, with all six wins by at least 15 points. Though ranked only 13th nationally, Jeff Sagarin's computer has the Tigers ranked sixth in the country.

To see why the Tigers have been so lethal early and get insights into the rise of the MVC and the surprise success of Harvard and UCF, become an ESPN Insider.